


Rock-a-Bye, Baby

by mrstater



Category: Breaking Bad
Genre: Babysitting, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Science, Widowed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-28
Updated: 2013-09-28
Packaged: 2017-12-27 20:49:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/983442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mrstater/pseuds/mrstater
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Without Hank, Marie struggles to find her rock.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rock-a-Bye, Baby

The living room looks like a science museum, Flynn teases her, with all the rocks displayed on the bookshelves.

"They’re not rocks, Flynn," Marie snaps at him, stopping short of invoking the name of Jesus. "They’re minerals, and they’re—"

All she has left. So many of the knickknacks that used to fill those shelves broken, smashed, _stolen_ by those… _Nazis_ , the agents had told her—Walter, no, Heisenberg…had stooped to working with _Nazi scum_. They took the complete collection of _Deadwood_ , for Christ’s sake. And that was just… ironic.

_She_ hasn’t pilfered a thing since she lost Hank, and that’s something. So maybe she’s gotten a tad OCD about arranging them on the shelves and learning their names and physical properties, but then again so had he, all those months he was stuck in that bed. She can’t put it into words, but she thinks she gets why Hank got so obsessed.

Technically they may be minerals, but they _are_ her rocks.

"Mi-mi!"

Along with the kids, Marie mentally adds, and bends to pick up the baby who just toddled over her foot and tugged at her pants leg.

"Want to look at the minerals, big girl?" she says, and holds Holly up to the shelf with the purple ones.

There are a lot of purple ones, she discovered, when she unpacked them all from the boxes in Hank’s mancave. Had he noticed there was a trend in his collection? There’s even one called purpurite. Geologists aren’t super creative, it seems.

"That’s Lepidolite," she tells her niece, pointing to a flaky lilac grey one. "And purple quartz. Can you say that? Quartz. It’s an easy one, Kind of."

But Holly makes no sound except to suck on her thumb. Gently, Marie pulls it from Holly’s mouth., and continues the lesson, bouncing her on her hip.

"That’s spodumene…A really hard one to say. But feel how smooth it is!" She leans in to stroke the dimpled hand over it. "That’s called a glassy luster."

"You—you sound like a museum person, Aunt Marie," says Flynn. "Ever think about getting a job in one?"

Now there’s an idea. “Would I get a title? Docent Schrader? Or I could just open my own museum. The Hank Schrader Memorial Mineral Collection. No—the _ASAC_ Schrader Memorial Mineral Collection. That’s better.”

Except it’s not. Hank, ASAC, it doesn’t matter which….neither one should have _memorial_ anythingattached to it. Not for years and years…

Yet there’s a big granite slab in Sunset Memorial Park with his name carved into it.

At the end of the shelf, next to the fluorite and tanzanite, whose names Marie mutters to Holly without bothering to coax her to say, stands a framed picture. A new print in a new frame, because the old one had been shattered by those… _fucking Nazis_ …and trampled on…and she’d had to crop out Walt and Sky from the original one and _thank god_ for digital cameras. She and Hank mugged like _that_ couple in Hawaii. They’d come _this close_ to being asked to leave the hotel, which meant they were doing vacation right, Hank said. _Hehehe. We rock, baby!_

"That’s Uncle Hank," she tells the baby in her arms, voice pitching high as a sob strangles her. "Can you say Uncle Hank? Or just Hank?"

Holly catches the corner of the frame and pulls it toward her mouth, but says nothing.

Blinking back tears, Marie shakes her head, as a memory rises from the rubble where it lay buried. “Say ASAC? ASAC Schrader?”

_If those turn out to be her first words, I will beat you with my shoe._ A purple patent stiletto…An ugly white squeaking around changing bedpans shoe…Hank wore a tie with purple stripes that day as she made the threat, she recalled, a photographic image in her mind. If only she had a real one to frame, of him being disgustingly adorably gooey with the baby.

Holly’s first word had been ma-ma— _thank God_ ; she’d heard babies often said da-da first. Hank would’ve been such a great dad. He _was_ …Who had Flynn called that night, when he got busted trying to buy beer? Not Walt.

"Asa!" squeals Holly.

"She—she said it, Aunt Marie," says Flynn, coming over on his crutches. "Holly said ASAC."

"She did, I heard her!" Marie laughs through her tears. "Yay, baby girl! You rock! High five!"

Holly’s little palm swats hers, and then Flynn’s. Marie lets out her breath, and sweeps her gaze across the shelves of photographs and minerals. _Rocks._

Hank was her rock.

Just like them, he always will be.


End file.
